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Wednesday, August 24, 2022

Content Survey Live 2022: Night Two: Mediocrity, Brisbane Style.

 

Welcome to the second night, of the ten best nights of 2022 in our books: the third edition of Content Survey Live. This year's changes are significant, but the ground rules always stay the same here.

The Ground Rules:

Our focus, in Content Survey Live traditionally has been monitoring Ten’s five capital city news services (a benefit of technological change, now allowing us to watch interstate bulletins on delay), in order of their ratings position within the network (with each market covered once) over a week, using the same criteria we used in the “Great Local News Study” from Kuttsy's Pitch XI in August, 2019.

-Locally sourced stories: that is stories reported by local journos. Really big local market stories with national impacts, also fit here. Voiced over local stories are counted separately.
-Live crosses: stuff that is used to embellish a story.
-Weather is not counted.
-Sport is not counted if it’s done by obviously freelance journos, or voiced over pieces: you gotta have dedicated reporters there, with their mug on air reporting a sports story for it to count.
-And finally: Ten Brisbane will have it’s Gold Coast content tracked again during it’s nights: something that has become a tradition in itself.

However in 2022, we have expanded to a two week format, with a entirely new way to rank bulletins
The first week, will seed bulletins based on comparisons with 2021 figures.
The second week, will seed bulletins based on comparisons with pre-pandemic and pre-centralization figures sourced from 2019.

A reminder now of this week's seedings:
Monday (22/8) Adelaide.
Tuesday (23/8) Brisbane.
Wednesday (24/8) Perth (which will also mark a significant milestone for Kuttsywood's Couch).
Thursday (25/8) Melbourne.
Friday (26/8) Sydney.

Now, let's begin today's heaping bowl of broadcast news mediocrity.

And, a reminder: to purchase merchandise related to Content Survey Live 2022, head on over to our shop over at Redbubble.


Brisbane, (our local bulletin incidentally), has always seen a lot of flak from us here. It's a bulletin that shouldn't have been centralized at all, because it serves not just the SEQ market, but Queensland as a whole. For the last twenty years, fifteen of those years have seen the 10 affiliate in this state (pretty much anywhere west and north of Brisbane) carry a barebones news product consisting of little more than news updates that are effectively rip and read, that has quite often seen the Brisbane bulletin having to cover stories outside SEQ just to fill in the gap where the local coverage did not exist.

And, then there was the five years between 2016 and 2021 where WIN was the 10 affiliate, and actually provided a decent news service (as well as the occasional story for Brisbane) to the majority of Queensland markets on a 10 affiliate for the first time since the aftermath of aggregation saw QTV cut back to it's heritage markets of Cairns and Townsville. The local news cutbacks of 2021 after WIN went back to Nine however: have pretty much left regional Queensland viewers with the following:
-WIN's news, now a combined product for Queensland as a whole at 5:30, with Nine's entire newshour floundering outside the SE at six.
-10's news in regional QLD effectively returning to pre-2016 conditions... except, the updates are produced in Hobart, not Canberra, while a centralized Brisbane bulletin now cannot fill the gap (thanks to progressive job cuts in the Brisbane newsroom) that was left from WIN's cutbacks.
-Seven's news in regional QLD steamrolling the competition (due to running bulletins in every regional submarket in the state at 6), despite only airing a 30 minute version of a one hour metropolitan news bulletin at 6:30.

Thus, 10's news is now the worse of two evils in some parts of this state, and is effectively the entire reason why Sky News Regional rates so high in Queensland: because 10's news (both the O&O in Brisbane and from it's regional affiliate) has effectively become unreliable in this state.

And it showed itself, back in early March. I still have memories of how TVQ's news covered the 2011 flood. This time around... it was a whole lot worse. In fact, let Veritas be the deliverer of openfaced criticism... that sadly at the time was rightfully deserved.

 On Feburary 28, 2022: the day after the worst suburban flooding in Brisbane since 1974 (which cost us Toombul Shoppingtown amongst other things), more people watched Sunrise between 6-9am in SEQ than watched 10's news at 5.

Any wonder, Brisbane's news ratings are finally starting to hit the gutter... as a city starts to prefer Tipping Point two hours earlier (giving Nine's local arvo news a fantastic lead-in)... to news for their city, being produced in Sydney.

So, let us now look at the bulletin that was 10 News First Brisbane, on August 23, 2022.

We begin the bulletin with the first day of a inquiry into Star Entertainment in Queensland, with heaping helpings of footage from a live stream of where it was being held (with timecodes seen in the piece of 11:30am and 10:39am respectively.) This was incidentally, the only Queensland news story that aired past 6pm in the Sydney/Brisbane hybrid.

Afterward, we got a apology from the premier about Question Time antics last week, that was made at Brisbane Airport, where Aviation High: the place where you go if it is impossible to work at Coles., had a careers fair at Brisbane Airport, which got it's own story (strangely, no sight in that entire piece though of BAC's new recruit in public relations) including a voice grab from a GE executive: after all, GE invented the pushbutton that operates master control in Sydney.

We also got a 1min 30sec Gold Coast-sourced story on SES improvements with Tom Tate doing a vox pop with the worst angle ever: beachside as a sandpumper belches out to his right, and a cheap plug for the Brisbane Fashion Festival.

In additon, there was two voiced over pieces (unconscious prisoner, and a car into a house in Thornlands) and that was the first segment done, all over, red rover.

We had to wait until 5:43, for the last two pieces in the bulletin to come from Queensland: a childhood cancer breakthrough and a Seaworld rescue of a whale in sharknets (35 seconds)

Sport: Unless you cared about Manly or Cronulla, it was a absolute miss, the closest mention a Brisbane side in any sport got during the two sports segments tonight, was a reminder of 4 day old news from the Gabba.

10 have pulled a absolute shocker of a bulletin... but more of a negative one than a positive.

The scores:
Six locally produced stories.
Three local V/O'd stories.
Zero market relevant sports content.
Zero live crosses.
2min 5secs of Gold Coast news.


In 2021, Brisbane got a score of 2.25/10
The first of two surveys this year: Brisbane got a score of 1.75/10.

Ratings figures for 10's news are just barely inside the 5-City Metro top 20 on Tuesday, with Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane ratings all within the sub 80k range. Brisbane a sub 80k figure is average these days: for Sydney/Melbourne however, these are significant YOY falls.

Yes, it is worse than last year: the lack of immediacy and relevancy cost the Brisbane bulletin dearly in it's first survey this year. On a night, where both 7/9 covered radio ratings, even a emergency at Booval (near Ipswich), 10 couldn't stitch together a bulletin worth watching in our part of the world. It has completely reiterated what Veritas said in March: that 10 deserves all the criticism for what the Brisbane bulletin has become... and sadly, because of how it's packaged: it will eventually take down the Sydney bulletin with it, unless moves are made to bring 10's Queensland news back home to Queensland, with the investment and patience required to revive a newsroom whose decisions are currently being made final in Pyrmont, not in Queensland.

And, sadly our home bulletin is performing worse in Brisbane than Local Edition did for Seven in 2000. 10 can be forced to act, by having Nine or Seven (who currently are struggling in Brisbane at the same place Bill McDonald struggled in 2017 and are also facing losing 2022 within weeks) following the Perth and Adelaide Nine model: of 5pm news: or even extend the 6pm news in Brisbane to a 5:30 start, anything to force Paramount to act.

Tomorrow, is the late shift: Perth, where we'll be burning the midnight oil on a piece that will also mark the 150th published piece at Kuttsywood's Couch.

But before we go: Some more advertising that was too extravagant for it's own good.

This time, it's Tourism Australia: with it's first post-Hoges campaign... with none other than a post-Whispering Jack John Farnham.
Farnsey, hopefully you get yourself on the mend soon.



Video from tapesalvage on Youtube.

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